I see from a couple of stories in the Daily Mail and on various blogs that I follow, stories and comment regarding Julian Fellows’ new series, The Gilded Age. It has finally come to fruition, after I noted it almost a decade ago, and predicted … well, not very much hope for the project. Well, good luck to the guy – he was about the consistently most amusing of all the reoccurring characters on the series Monarch of the Glen.

I might actually watch The Gilded Age, always remembering the massive thud made by the Beacon Hill series made in the mid-1970s, when another TV producer sought to duplicate the enormous success of Upstairs, Downstairs with something of the same privileged-family upstairs and hardworking staff below stairs, and same era in an American setting. It didn’t fly back then; didn’t even last a season. I guess with the success of Downton Abbey, Mr. Fellows is certain that his luck has changed and for the better.

Alas, the problem in translating English upper-class to American upper-class remains; it’s not ever an exact translation. Julian Fellows may have better luck in spotting his pseudo-aristocratic follies in New York, when Mrs. Astor and Ward McAllister held social sway over the fabled 400. But the fortunes and foibles of the very, very rich in 1880s America were otherwise widely spread, across the entire continent and in too many specific industries. New York high society might be the closest equivalent to English society of the same era, where the ton gathered in London, and around the fabled ‘Season’ of society events, festivals, customs, and social practices. Otherwise, the American richer class were too widely dispersed, with their own ‘seasons’ events and practices, differing favored schools for the education of their young, churches for the binding in marriage of their scions, and neighborhoods for the construction of their monumental mansions. There was no single one cynosure for ‘society’ as Americans knew it, save for a limited slice of it in New York, once upon a day. Every notable region and city had their nobs and nobility – some of them, like the widow of inventor and industrialist Samuel Colt (who might have been the single wealthiest woman in America from mid-19th century on) didn’t even bother to play the New York high society game at all.  Drawing them all together into one narrative for the purpose of dramatic story-telling … glad it’s not my job, and I do wish Mr. Fellows the best of luck in his endeavors in this regard. I have occasionally amused myself by mentally putting together a series which would draw in all the various strands of wealth during the gilded age … maybe something set in a posh resort hotel, like the one on Mackinac Island, or at Saratoga Springs or a health spa like the Kellogg establishment.

Real life ought to march on through the garage a little more often … my daughter and I set Wee Jamie in the middle of his playmat on the big double bed in my bedroom Saturday morning and went to tackle the garage … Hey, why does a nice single woman of advanced years like you need a double bed?! Hey, I want my half IN THE MIDDLE!! So there! Between Small Doggie wanting to be at one quadrant under the covers on cold nights, and Isabelle the Not-Tightly-Wrapped-Siamese wanting another quadrant for herself, I am lucky to be able to claim the middle sector.

Anyway, the garage needs a good turn-out and reorganization of the contents, what with all the … umm… stuff in it. There’s a boxed high chair, a play table for Wee Jamie, and a little work desk with chair when he ages into the needs for it, a couple of other items for him when he is slightly older, some stuff that he has grown out of which needs to be trucked to a friend of ours with an incipient grandchild who will need it, a few things saved against the eventual kitchen reno, another bunch of construction materials which need to be safely organized and stashed away, a whole lotta tools also in crying need of an organization … hey, we had almost a dozen foam and fiber disposable paint brushes, knocking around the inner recesses of the garage! Really, the garage had descended all unknowing into the state where it was just simpler to buy another one, rather than go on an expedition searching for it.

Three unopened tubes of various construction calk. Well, now that is safely sorted into a new wheeled tool-box, with simply everything inside it…

My daughter did a run to Goodwill yesterday, another one today. And consigned a couple of things to the trash can or the curb, for whoever wants them. We went right back to it this morning, ruefully conceding that this will be a project which will consume most of the next week, perhaps the next weekend as well, as we have only got as far as the corner with the workbench, a quarter of one wall and the niche where the freezer and the hot water heater are. But at least now the corner with the tool bench is organized, and all the chargers for various battery-operated tools are set up and charging, and the tools themselves hung neatly in a row on the wall. A large part of the problem is that there is a lot of furniture set aside for my daughter’s future independent establishment, several boxed items meant in the near future for Wee Jamie – like the little toddler-sized desk and chair – and some like the porcelain farmhouse sink intended for my eventual kitchen reno. There are also lengths of baseboard, beadboard, architectural trim and a box of vinyl flooring to be used in the near future on other renovation projects. All must be re-staged in a more space-saving mode, so that I can get my car back into the garage, once it is ransomed from the paint and body shop, which had it to work on over the holidays, after the misadventure with the hood coming loose and smashing into the windshield and roof two months ago.

And I used to think that it was a good thing I wasn’t moving every year, or three years or so. The drastic thinning of possessions which must happen with families who have lived in the same house for a hundred years or more doesn’t really bear thinking about.

05. January 2022 · Comments Off on A Brief Miscellany · Categories: Domestic

One of the few nice things about this so-far-severely-depressing twenty-first century is the ubiquity of cellphones which can take pictures, and sometimes of a very good quality. Just about everyone has a cellphone, and those of us who have them are wandering around with one in our pocket or purse, or whatever – have the instant ability to take a picture of interesting curiosities at the drop of a hat. Just not when we are setting out on a deliberate photographic safari, with the camera and all in our possession.

There are three such images which remain in my memory as things that I most deeply wish I could have taken such a picture, so that I could have shared the astonishingly beautiful, striking image. They are enshrined in my memory only – so I can’t possibly share them, save in words.

The first is that of a certain Japanese maple tree, a small one, barely the size of a large shrub, growing to the right of the main door to the old base library at Misawa AFB in the late 1970s. The library then was housed in a post WWII single story temporary frame administrative-type building, of the kind which our military put up by hundreds of thousands on bases and posts across the USA and the world during that era. To my eyes these buildings always looked rather like two Monopoly houses put together, long, with a shallow roof pitch and usually windows along the long walls. The little maple tree, which was otherwise not particularly distinguished, nevertheless had the most beautiful, deep ruby-red leaves, once the foliage turned to fall colors. No other maple tree I ever laid eyes on, before or since, had quite the same purity of color – the very soul of red; like bright blood. It was splendid enough … but at least once in the years that I was there, an early snowfall hit, while the little tree by the library was still covered thick in vivid red leaves. And that was the most striking, memorable sight – the red leaves against the pure white new snow. I am certain there were classical Japanese woodcut artists who did pictures of red maple leaves, on snow, probably modern photographers who have managed to capture the same image. But in my own mind and memory, nothing to compare to the perfect red of the leaves of that little maple tree, and the vision of them, against the pure white of new snow … simply incomparable.

The second image also involves snow More »

01. January 2022 · Comments Off on 2021 – Year End Roundup & Goals · Categories: Domestic, Random Book and Media Musings

Well, upon looking at last year’s roundup of goals reached, and goals to reach – I haven’t done too shabbily at all. Of course no big-name producer for streaming entertainment has made a serious (or even an unserious bid) to make the Adelsverein sequence, or the Luna City series into a mini-series – but hey, I live in hope. What’s a dream for, anyway?

Anyway; the windows, sliding door between the dining room and the Sumptuous Catio and French door for the front bedroom were all done and dusted early in the year, just before the great Texas Snowmagedden of 2021 descended upon us, and just in the nick of time, too. The Daughter Unit and I weathered through, just fine, since it never got cold enough in the newly-re-sided and insulated house to freeze anything of note.

The Chicken Abode was also done, and stocked with four laying hens, and it all worked very nicely, right up until the tragic day when something vicious got into the back yard and slaughtered two hens outright and mauled a third so severely that she died two days later. The fourth hen died around midsummer, cause unknown, and Larry Bird the rooster also, but from old age. I don’t want to restock the coop until spring, when Wee Jamie the miracle grandson, is a little bit older, and I have the time to spare from tending to him, while my daughter begins on making her fortune as a licensed real estate agent.

Basically, all the previously established goals for maintenance of the house itself have been achieved. Now the only remaining project is to finish paying for said projects: the windows, the siding and paint, and for an emergency fix to the HVAC system incurred the week that Wee Jamie was born. Fortunately, I have a couple of clients for publishing assistance, which will, with luck, help with that. The only remaining project that I have in relation to that is to get the den floor done in the same high-end vinyl flooring which has gone into one room and the hallway so far, and pay Roman the Neighborhood Handy Guy to do the work. I also want to be able to afford a nice pneumatic nail gun, so I can do certain carpentry stuff myself and not have to keep borrowing Roman TNHG’s compressor and nail gun.

New projects for this year:

1 – run a short length of tall fence with a gate in it from the side of the garage to the brick-faced pillar which encloses my next-door neighbor’s yard, to make a small private patio, which opens through the new French door from the front bedroom. I plan to paint the whole fence and gate white, to match the trim on the house. Eventually, when my daughter has had a good few years in real estate and moved out to her own establishment, this room will become my office and library.

2 – renew the fence and gate on the opposite side, and paint it white to match – basically, a straight façade of fence, garage door, fence across the front of the house, keeping all but two small areas on either side of the driveway private and secure. Maybe install electric porch lights on both sides.

3 – if sufficient addition income from royalties and the Teeny Publishing Bidness permits, see to redoing the back fence, which is in truly parlous condition. No, I don’t think I can reuse the original fence palings, one more time, although at the rate that costs for them are going up, I might have a good try at it. Wood is wood, and I kind of like the weathered look.

Alas – all this work for the Teeny Publishing Bidness means that writing Luna City 11 is put off until mid-spring, and the Civil War novel, That Fateful Lightning (which is half-done at the moment) is also put off until I can submerge myself in Civil War campaign and medical trivia and write the second half; full of drama, battles, blasted hopes, showers of half-inch sized lead ammunition, and hope for a better world when the war is won. Hopes that are seasoned with despair and tragedy, for wasn’t it always thus?

I had a publishing client meet in mid-November, the week before Thanksgiving, and the Daughter also had a necessary meeting with her agency on the same day and time, Since it was more professional-appearing for her to appear, unencumbered with infant offspring for that meet, I had Wee Jamie with me, in the back of my car … that is, the venerable 1990 Accura Legend; top of the line luxury, in the day when it was new. I am the second owner of that car, and regret to report that I have let it go sadly downhill, condition-wise. It doesn’t help that the leather seats have gotten crusty and dried-out, the radio (an original unit) is frelled, the AC unit needs a fresh injection of freon, the moon roof leaks in a heavy rain, and that the left-hand running light was thought impossible to replace since an inconsiderate elderly driver in a humongous SUV cut in front of me two years ago and bashed out that unit with the edge of his wheel-chair hoist. I shouldn’t cast aspersions on the abilities of that guilty party, based on advanced age, since (from the evidence of his insurance policy) he was the same age as your correspondent.

So, my personal car, the aged Accura Legend lives in the garage, safe from rainy downpours, which would send a shower of water down the back of my neck … and it’s the secondary car, basically, with the minimum insurance on it, which I now regret. It drives like a dream, otherwise – accelerates like a rocket, turns on a dime with three cents change, and does almost 300 miles on a full tank of gas. Our occasional car, for long-distance driving as it has cruise control and excellent gas mileage, in fair weather … anyway. More »